Next Gen News

Full coverage as the culture select committee questions four former News of the World executives including Colin Myler and Tom Crone, plus the Leveson inquiry's first hearing

Lawyers acting for "potentially over 100" alleged victims of phone hacking said they too would like to give evidence to the inquiry.

- Potentially more than 100 alleged victims of phone hacking, including Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan and George Galloway

Dan Sabbagh on Crone's admission earlier that he had asked News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck about the 'for Neville' email.

Time for another Crone lesson for the select committee - he tells them that private investigators are often used in divorce cases, the practice is quite routine.

Myler is quietly annoyed. He is confident he had nothing to do with phone-hacking or any alleged cover up.

January 2007. He said when he arrived he thought there had been "more of an investigation" into phone-hacking that there had been.

Myler says he is "very comfortable" with what he did as editor of the News of the World. His tenure as editor came after the phone-hacking episodes involving Goodman and Mulcaire - he was appointed almost immediately after they were jailed and former editor Andy Coulson had resigned.

Myler says there is "no suggestion that anyone tried to hide anything" and again repeats that the 'for Neville' email was police property, not News International property.

After firstly saying he never did, he offers a clarification: "I may have in litigation. I might well have used private investigator on various issues, like tracing, surveillance and maybe other matters.

"Its not unusual for lawyers to use private investigators."

Another heated exchange between Watson and Crone who tries to explain once again to Watson that the reason the Taylor payout was big had nothing to do with a cover up. His priority was to 'contain' further risk of litigation by other public figures.

Raising his voice over another Watson intervention, he says: "We couldn't reveal the for Neville email because of ... The provenance of this document was the Metropolitan Police, coming out of their files. How can we be accused of covering up something that has come from the police?"

He revealed that he "relayed" Coulson's hopes to Goodman and said that Coulson had said he was hoping to persuade Hinton to find a way of keeping him on whatever the outcome of the trial.

"I didn't know anything about his letter, until quite recently," he says.

Chapman: "I think that Mr Murdoch didn't have his facts right. I don't think he had been briefed properly. I think it was wrong to ..."

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Sheridan asks: is it normal practice that whoever gets "sent to prison, gets a year's salary and a top up?"

Chapman says there was 'no basis in which we were trying to cover up' and that he had been asked to reach 'a reasonable settlement'.

Chapman explains it was done to avoid an employment tribunal. Many companies, he says, make these payments even if there is little chance of a tribunal succeeded.

11.21am:

Dan Sabbagh is not impressed with the committee's questioning.

No one admitted "any wrong-doing at all", says Cloke during the investigation into the email correspondence.

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